


Storm King's Thunder: Arcana Checks

by valamerys



Series: Storm King's Thunder campaign fic [2]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Gen, Kelvin's Cairn, orb origins, rekhien being a little shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:22:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23095546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valamerys/pseuds/valamerys
Summary: Marin fails to identify a magical item and hits Rekhien with a pillow.
Series: Storm King's Thunder campaign fic [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1659832
Kudos: 6





	Storm King's Thunder: Arcana Checks

**Author's Note:**

> The Stormchasers recently emerged from the deep caves system beneath Dwarven stronghold Kelvin's Cairn, where they fought a Duergar king. Rekhien came back with a souvenir.

Waking up feels like coming back from the dead, and Marin supposes that’s not far off. She’s slept so deeply that her muscles protest the sudden movement; the healing wound on her back from the dwarf king’s axe— Theseus’s axe, now— throbs angrily beneath her shift as she curls into the covers with a groan. She’s so exhausted that it’s a mystery she’s awake at all, until something pokes her in the shoulder again and she opens a bleary eye to see Rekhien perched on the edge of the bed.

“Marin,” He hisses. “You awake?”

Her throat is rough with sleep, her voice a scrape against it: “Nngh.  _ What _ , Rekhien?”

She supposes, through her tired fog, that she didn’t lock the door before collapsing— but surely Rekhien wouldn’t bother her unless it was important. She scrubs her eyes with the heel of a palm, grimaces. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Rekhien drums his eternally twitchy fingers against the bedspread, wide-awake and awfully unconcerned, for a man who just woke up a sorceress known for incinerating people. “I just need you to look at this for me. I think it’s magic.”

As she makes a mental note to give Rekhien even less credit than she already doesn’t, he produces a polished sphere, an orange color with just the faintest living swirl to it, like smoke under glass. Its only remarkable feature is a dark slit a few inches long, clearly an artificial break in its otherwise smooth surface.

Marin blinks groggily at it. “This couldn’t have waited?”

Rekhien props his free hand under his chin, elbow braced against his knee, and smiles blithely. “Nope.”

In another life she might protest her state of undress, or the fact that he’s a jerk for waking her up, but he’s in his sleeping clothes too, barefoot in a tunic and trousers, and it’s hardly the most compromising situation they’ve been in, or the most exasperating thing he’s done recently. Marin pushes herself upright, clumsily extracts her arms from the mass of down blankets and pillows to take the orb from him.

It feels strange in her hands: heavier than she’d expect, and, sure enough, prickling with a faint magical charge that hums in her fingertips. It’s concerning to think Rekhien’s been running around with it with no idea what it does, frankly. She tucks a stray lock of hair behind a horn. “Where did you get this?”

He goes rigid, and at this point she’s seen him do this so many times that Marin can sense it before he even says anything, read in his posture that he’s about to lie through his teeth.

“I found it.”

She fixes him with a stare. “So you stole it?”

“I  _ found _ it. Y’know. Downstairs.” 

“ _ Downstairs _ ,” Marin repeats incredulously. “You mean miles underground in the labyrinthine keep of an evil dwarf family that was supposed to be dead that nearly killed us?  _ That _ downstairs?”

He at least has the self-awareness to smirk at himself. “Yeah, that downstairs. With Theseus,” he adds, perhaps in a bid to legitimize his probable grave-robbery. He waves a dismissive hand. “It doesn’t matter, c’mon, it’s here now. Can your— I don’t know, magic sorcerer powers or whatever— tell you what it does? Is it magic?”

Marin reluctantly lets his absurdity go, looks back down at the orb. She turns it over in her hands, palms the surface. There’s a deeper thrum of the arcane to it, stronger the more she focuses, a dark resonance clear but foreign. It’s nothing like the magic that sings in her own veins like the howl of the wind, or Phyn’s earthy connection, or Theseus’s gold-bright divinity, or even the ageless energy of the Frost Giants and their storms.

She shrugs, hands it back to him. “It’s definitely magic, that’s all I can tell you.”

He frowns at the thing, and Marin notices that his thieves’ tools and that damned cloak lie bundled next to him. What, was he going to pick the lock on her door if he needed to? 

“Oh!” Following her gaze, Rekhien perks up as if he’s remembered something. “Would you look at my cloak, too?”

Marin crosses her arms in his direction.

“........... Please?” He adds at length, strangely high-pitched, like the word doesn’t come naturally to him.

“Why now? You’ve had it this whole time.”

Rekhien eyes it, rubs a bit of the hem between his fingers. “I dunno. I can’t shake the feeling there’s something weird about it.”

Marin remembers the heat of the dynamite explosion singeing the ends of her hair in Waterdeep, the trail of blood that soaked into the wooden door where the cloak was nailed.  _ You mean other than the fact that someone died in it? _ She thinks, but takes it anyway, splays a section of the fabric between her hands.

It seems like a simple garment, the material coarse and fraying. But as she focuses on it, there is  _ something _ , some thin power woven in with the threads that ebbs and flows against her skin.

“My extremely special magic sorcery abilities are telling me…” She makes intense eye contact with Rekhien, and he looks like he’s not breathing with anticipation. Marin pokes a finger through one of the stab wound holes, wiggles it at him. “That it’s bloodstained and full of holes.”

He scowls, snatches it back, and Marin indulges in throwing her head back with a cackle of a laugh before adding, “ _ And _ it’s magic! Somehow. But that’s all I got.”

“But it  _ is _ magic?” Rekhien holds the cloak up to the dim faelight next to the bed, as though that might suddenly illuminate its properties. He tilts his head indulgently at it. “Excellent.”

Discomfort pricks at the back of Marin’s neck, and she realizes the slit of the orb, cradled in Rekhien’s lap, is pointed at her, and for a moment it looks for all the world like a great orange eye, staring.

Rekhien sets the cloak aside and the effect is broken with his movement, but an unsettled feeling lingers. “I don’t know.” Marin murmurs. “I would be careful with that orb.”

“I’m sure it’s fine.” He’s still smiling as he takes one of the thin pieces of metal from his thieves’ kit, twirls it between his fingers. “Magic relics are good, right? Or they wouldn’t be so expensive.”

Marin has some experience smuggling mystical curios, has heard Idel and Hafren’s countless warnings about jobs gone wrong, crews lost to greedy hands and boxes that shouldn’t have been opened: rings that burrowed into the flesh and poisoned, vials that held malevolent undead spirits in search of a living host, old books that opened not onto stories or spells but hungry rifts between planes.

“They’re  _ really _ not,” Marin says with a cringe, as he begins inelegantly probing the sphere with the tool. “And given where you found that thing, you should probably let Theseus hold onto it. He has more protection than we do against… evil.”

Rekhien scoffs, holds the orb up to his ear and knocks on it like he’s checking to see if it’s hollow. “ _ Theseus _ ? I definitely don’t need  _ his _ help. If it turns out to be evil we can sell it to an equally evil wizard. Problem solved.”

Marin winds a frustrated hand through her hair, tries to formulate an argument. She usually doesn’t get the urge to strangle him  _ quite _ so early in the morning, and it’s making her inarticulate. “We don’t know what this does or where it’s from, Rekhien. It could be  _ very _ dangerous.”

“Or,” Rekhien says, teeth bared gleefully, “It could make us  _ very _ rich.”

“Mysterious magic has consequences!” She blurts, and the dripping candles on the vanity gutter on their wicks as her magic flickers with her emotions, sending a faint gust of wind through the room. “Usually bad ones!”

Rekhien raises his eyebrows, a lock of unkempt black hair thrown across his forehead by the breeze. “You,” he says, and points at her with the tool he’s holding. “Are way too nervous about this. It’s  _ fine _ .”

Marin accepts, finally, that she’s not getting back to sleep, or through to Rekhien, anytime soon. She throws the covers aside with a huff, feet meeting the cold stone floor and her shift fluttering around her calves.

“And  _ you _ ,” she strides to the door, pulls the enormous, highly crafted slab of metal open with only a little straining, and gestures to the hallway. “Can go play with your cursed orb in your own chamber. I need to get dressed.”

“Aw, Marin,” Rekhien cants his head at her, a lopsided grin stealing across his expression. “I was really enjoying you being worried for my safety.”

Marin flushes, points with a stiff arm. “ _ Out,  _ Rekhien.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Nearly an hour later and fully awake now, Marin feels better than she has in weeks, skin warm and almost raw with cleanliness. The enormous sunken bathtub in the bathing chamber attached to her bedroom is almost certainly the most luxury she’s ever experienced, and the pine-and-sugar smell of the soap clings to her in a pleasant fog, a welcome reprieve from scents of cave damp and sweat.

She emerges to find Theseus already lingering in the cavernous hallway, examining his axe in the flickering gold light thrown out by the sconces on the pillars. They exchange muted greetings as Marin takes the empty seat next to his, a lavishly upholstered thing that seems comically low to the ground in comparison to humanoid limbs. The prince still looks worse for wear, a sheen of battle-weariness lingering over his noble affect: there’s a fading bruise on his chiseled cheekbone, and blood from the fight with the king still clings in the furrows and scratches of his armor. 

Phyn slips from his own door a few minutes later, his footsteps in the great stone hallway soundless in his elfin way. He looks as wan as Theseus, although in his case it’s almost certainly the psychic trauma of losing Lulu rather than lingering physical exhaustion. Marin stares at her shoes, guilt still a burning ember in her stomach.

But a half-smile lifts Phyn’s expression as he joins them, and he claps Theseus on the pauldron, rattling his armor. “Sleep well,  _ Kingslayer _ ?” 

Theseus ducks his head sheepishly, but it’s clear he likes the title, and the action makes Marin want to smile too. “Good morning, Phyn.”

Of course, it probably  _ isn’t _ morning, removed from the sun as they are, but the pretense is a welcome scrap of normalcy. Phyn settles against the nearest of the massive stone pillars, and inclines his head in her direction. “Marin.”

He’s been remarkably kind about her accidental murder of his companion thus far; if the greeting is a bit cold, it’s hard to fault him for it. She wraps a coil of hair around a finger. “Morning.”

“We should try to talk to the prince today.” Theseus says quietly, perhaps to distract from the dead wolf in the room. “He needs to know about the Feradins.”

Phyn toys with the mechanical shield strapped to his arm. “Agreed. I almost wonder if he’ll try to reach out peaceably, knowing they’ve lost their leader.”

“Sounds like Ferrick,” Marin muses.

She stays mostly silent as they strategize aimlessly, waiting for Rekhien to join them. But the minutes slip by and he doesn’t: five, ten, fifteen. Theseus ends up extolling the virtues of broadswords vs shortswords to Phyn and Marin stops listening to steep herself in a preemptive annoyance (that the idiot is too distracted by his toys to deign to join them) that turns to worry (that something terrible  _ did _ happen to him) that turns to a smug sort of anger nestled in her chest (she  _ warned _ him— )

Passing what must be thirty minutes or so, the mood of the hallway turns nervous like a fruit going rotten. The conversation falls into a lull, and it becomes a waiting game for one of them to suggest checking on Rekhien.

Theseus eventually breaks the seal with a sigh, turning the axe over in his hands. “Do you suppose he’s still asleep?”

Marin makes a conscious effort to unclench her jaw enough to speak. “I talked to him an hour ago, and he was awake then.”

Phyn and Theseus exchange a glance.

Theseus leads the parade to Rekhien’s door, bangs on it with the end of the handle of his axe. The noise is deafening, reverberates off the cavernous stone walls, but they wait, and Marin’s anxiety ratchets up another notch, and no answer comes.

“Maybe he went to find breakfast?” Phyn suggests weakly as Marin’s pulse hammers in her throat and she pushes past Theseus to grasp the handle of the door. It’s not locked, and when she pushes, it gives way with the same grinding stone-on-stone resistance as her own.

But Marin forgets the strain in her arms at the sight of Rekhien, cross-legged in the middle of the bed, turning the orb over and over in his hands and gazing at it with a blank stare.

All three of them freeze. The sight is immediately, obviously  _ wrong _ somehow, Rekhien’s motions too rhythmic, his focus too eerily intent, eyes unseeing. The annoyance in Marin’s blood ices over to fear.

Theseus clears his throat behind her, voice betraying the same caution. “Rekhien?”

It does nothing; he still doesn’t look up, doesn’t seem to register their entrance at all. He’s still wearing his sleep clothes, hair disheveled, utterly unchanged from their last conversation. Marin’s pretty sure he’s not blinking. 

Her paralysis fractures as quickly as it was formed; she’s across the room in a handful quick strides and, before she has time to think better of it, snatches the orb from his hands. The strangeness on him breaks instantly, a wave against a rock. His head snaps up, his expression reverting to perfectly Rekhien-esque dismay. “Hey!”

“What in the nine hells is wrong with you?” She hisses, brandishing the orb that she realizes she probably should have checked before touching.

Phyn’s voice is uncharacteristically dark as he and Theseus catch up with Marin. “Rekhien, what  _ is _ that?”

“What is  _ what _ ? Give that  _ back— _ ” he makes a swipe at the orb, and there’s some kind of black symbol on his palm— a tattoo? Has he always had that? He wears gloves so often Marin can’t recall. But she dodges out of reach, and realizes that something is still, in fact, wrong. She looks at the orb.

“How long have you been doing that?” Theseus asks Rekhien, brandishing the axe like he half expected a fight.

“Doing  _ what _ ?” Rekhien snaps. “What the fuck are you all doing in here?”

Phyn answers him, but Marin barely hears it, focused on the orb— and the pure  _ absence _ of magic emanating from it. Gone is the sense of depth, the arcane hum. Cool and unresponsive, it may as well be a lump of mundane rock in her hand. Which means—

“— Were just  _ staring _ at it. How long—”

Marin shoves the orb at Theseus perhaps harder than she should, interrupts Phyn to clamber up onto the bed, jaw set because  _ if she’s right about this— _ Rekhien makes a face but doesn’t physically resist when she puts a hand firmly on his forehead, as if checking him for a fever, and—

There it is. Whatever energy lived in the orb when Rekhien first brought it to her has taken up residence in  _ him _ , his skin now tingling faintly with that unfamiliar power. Marin could scream.

He shoves her hand away, red-faced. “Nine hells, Marin—”

Rather than answer, Marin reaches for a pillow and lobs it straight at his face.

“You!” She fumes, and his protests are muffled by the onslaught of fine dwarven textiles, the gentle  _ thump _ of feathers making contact. “Idiot!” Marin distantly hears Phyn stifle a laugh. “I  _ warned _ you!”

Rekhien manages to intercept the pillow, and for a moment it’s taut between them, contested territory. She glares at him over it, and he glares back.

“I was in your room  _ minutes _ ago, Marin,” Rekhien says, words as pointed as one of his knives, “We talked about this. What did you do, run and wake up Phyn and Theseus to help you yell at me?”

“ _ Minutes _ ?” Marin chokes, and releases the pillow. All the anger runs out of her, leaves her feeling cold. “That was over an hour ago, Rekhien.”

For a moment, that actually seems to give him pause, a flicker of concern crossing his sharp features. He opens his mouth again, but it’s Theseus who speaks, looking over the orb in his grip.

“This is the relic the king dropped.” his other hand is choked up on the axe’s handle at his side. “I didn’t realize you’d kept it.”

“The king? As in the evil dwarf king?” Marin levels her gaze back at Rekhien. “ _ That’s _ where you got it?”

He offers a halfhearted,  _ what-did-you-expect-from-me _ shrug. “Theseus got an axe, I wanted something too.”

Theseus passes the orb to Phyn, who eyes it in kind, thin fingers tracing the shape cut into the surface. Phyn looks towards Marin. “You said you talked about this?”

“Rekhien asked me to look at it earlier,” Marin says stiffly. “I did, and it was magic, and now it’s not magic,  _ and Rekhien is _ .” 

“I don’t see why that’s a problem!” Rekhien says obstinately, as Theseus holds a hand out towards him, fingers splayed, as if to sense what Marin does. “What, I’m the only one who’s not allowed to cast spells?”

Malevolent magic can’t kill Rekhien if Marin does first. “The  _ problem _ ,” she goes for another pillow, and Rekhien throws up his arms in preemptive defense, “Is that I was  _ right _ and you went and got yourself  _ cursed _ .”

“I feel  _ great _ , thank you very—” 

Before he can finish the thought and Marin can enact plush vengeance for it, Theseus’s hand comes up to grip one of Rekhien’s raised wrists, twists it so that the palm— the one with the black symbol— is facing up.

“Alright, for the record— ” Rekhien tries to shake off the grip and fails miserably, Theseus solid as stone as he frowns at Rekhien’s hand. “— Just because you all  _ can _ manhandle me doesn’t mean I’m okay with it. _ ” _

“Is this symbol new, Rekhien?” Theseus asks, with a piercing, solemn gravity Marin imagines only nobility can evoke.

Rekhien makes a string of undignified, noncommittal noises. “Well, I mean—”

“The king had this symbol on his palm too,” Theseus goes on, the full force of his gaze bearing down on Rekhien’s gently squirming form. “When he died.”

The weight of the words makes Marin suddenly glad she wasn’t conscious to see it, that she has only her imagination to provide the vague image of a raging golden Theseus bringing death to bear on the king’s fragile skull. And if he had that symbol too— 

“It’s a popular tattoo nowadays!” Rekhien redoubles his efforts to break Theseus’s grip, and the prince releases him. Rekhien shuffles backwards across the bed in retreat, cradles his wrist like he’s been wounded, and glances at the mark. “But— yeah. It, uh, it might be new.”

Marin lets out an exaggerated groan and flops back into the down comforter. “He’s cursed.”

“He could be enchanted,” Phyn offers.

“Or possessed,” Theseus says dryly.

“I feel  _ fine _ !” Rekhien snaps, color high in his cheeks. Marin fleetingly considers learning a spell to render him temporarily mute— she’s never had to  _ study _ a spell before, but it might be worth it. As if determined to prove her right, after a moment he says, much more quietly, “Can I have the ball back?”

“NO.” Marin sits up with the force of the word, putting herself bodily between Theseus and Rekhien, whose face slips into a pout. “You  _ cannot _ have the ball back, and we’re taking you to the temple to see if the priestesses know what’s wrong with you,” Marin concludes firmly. It wasn’t a plan she possessed until this particular moment, but it’s probably their best option, and glance at Phyn and Theseus confirms a lack of opposition.

“After we talk to the prince,” Theseus adds gently.

Marin points a finger at Rekhien, corrects herself.  _ “ _ After we talk to the prince.”

Rekhien looks disgruntled, like an unruly child being made to do housework. “Do I get any say in this at all? I’m a grown adult, what if I refuse to go to the temple?” 

“Then Theseus and Phyn will carry you,” Marin says flippantly, and is privately thrilled that neither of them object behind her. She’s hardly the captain of this crew, but she could get used to a handful of strapping men following her lead. She slides off the bed, dusts off her hands. “So get dressed, we have a prince to meet.”

“Gladly, if you’ll all get the hell out of my room.” Rekhien pulls one of the sheets to his chest in a sudden, ridiculous show of modesty, glancing between each of them. “Seriously, you  _ all _ had to come in here? It’s rude to walk in on a man in his smalls.”

Marin looks pointedly at Rekhien. “It is, isn’t it?”

He stares back uncomprehendingly. “Yeah. I just said that.”

A strangled noise of frustration is born and dies in Marin’s throat, and she turns on a heel and forces herself towards the door before the urge to incinerate him becomes too much to bear.


End file.
